1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a tablet dispenser comprising a tubular protective housing provided with an ejection guide for tablets, which are adapted to be contained in the housing as a stack, the top tablet of which is movable into the working range of an ejector having a claw, which is movable between lateral guides transversely to the longitudinal direction of the stack to eject said top tablet. Side walls which constitute the lateral guides are interconnected by a bridge, which constitutes a stop, which is engageable by the top tablet to be ejected, and above said bridge said side walls have side wall extensions, which are provided with pivot pins, which extend outwardly transversely to the ejection direction. The ejector comprises side walls, which extend on the outside of said side wall extensions and are formed with bearing bores for receiving the pivot pins, which are adapted to snap into said bearing bores after said side wall elements have elastically been deflected inwardly. The bridge is connected to a U-shaped spring, the upper leg of which has an free end portion that at least when the ejector has been mounted extends between the side wall extensions to engage a stop of the ejector at a distance from the pivot pins to oppose a movement of said ejector from a stand-by position.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Such tablet dispensers are preferably used to dispense tablets which have a peripheral surface which is, e.g., prismatic or cylindrical so that they can easily be assembled to form a columnar stack. But such dispensers may also be used to dispense tablets having different shades. The lateral guides may consist of longitudinal ribs of the tubular protective housing. The tablet stack can be lifted by means of spring-loaded pressure-applying rams or by manually operated pushers. The lateral guides may be arranged to clamp the top tablet of the stack in a stand-by position so that is not possible to lift the stack during an ejection of the top tablet. It is also known to provide the lateral guides a drawer, which is adapted to be pushed into the protective housing.
The ejector may consist of a pivoted cap, which is provided with an ejector claw and in its stand-by position covers the top tablet and the lateral guides and/or the side wall extensions. In many cases that cap is supplemented to form a decorative ejector head, which has the same function as the cap but is designed to constitute a longer lever arm for imparting a pivotal movement to the ejector. In a known tablet dispenser of the present kind the spring is integral with the bridge and the side walls and is made of a suitably treated plastic and is reversely bent above the bridge so that the upper leg of the spring extends between the side walls in any position which it is adapted to assume. To permit the ejector to be fitted on the pivot pins simply by a snap action when the side wall extensions are forced toward each other at the top, the free end portion of the upper leg of that spring is laterally tapered and the distance between each longitudinal side edge of that free end portion and the adjacent surface of the side wall extension is at least as large as the length of each of the pivot pins. To facilitate the fitting of the ejector by a snap action, the pivot pins are relatively short and are very small in diameter, of an order of 1 to 2 mm. The free end portion of the upper leg of the spring and the stop may be so designed that the spring will oppose a movement of the ejector not only from its stand-by position but also from its Position assumed at the end of its ejecting movement so that particularly if the ejector consists of a relatively large ejector head an undesired rocking of said head in response to shakes will be prevented. In that case the stop constitutes a camming ledge for guiding the free end portion of the spring during the pivotal movement of the ejector.
A disadvantage of the known tablet dispensers resides in that the short and thin pivot pins and the side wall extensions can easily be elastically deformed by a tensile force so that the ejector may then be torn off and this may result in a fracture of the pivot pins or of the side wall extensions carrying them or in a tearing of the side walls of the ejector at the bearing bores. In that case the tablet dispenser will become inoperable and there will be a risk that, e.g., playing small children may swallow the ejector or the broken off parts of the ejector or may be injured at fractures.